Siobhan Mullally

Civic Integration, Migrant Women and the Veil: At the Limits of Rights?

Controversies surrounding the wearing of the veil by Muslim women in Europe have coincided with a resurgence of interest in pathways to citizenship and integration testing. This article argues that the historical vestiges of discrimination in immigration and citizenship laws persist today in the scrutiny of the cultural affiliations and practices of aspiring immigrants and citizens. Muslim women have been placed at the center of such scrutiny, increasingly defined by the arbiters of belonging as les anormeaux. This article explores recent legislative developments on the wearing of the veil in France and examines these developments in the light of the expansion of integration testing and human rights laws normative commitments to more just multicultural arrangements.

‘As Nearly as May Be’: Debating Women’s Human Rights in Pakistan

Tensions between the constitutional commitment to equality and the politicization of Islam create conflicting claims for Pakistan’s legal system. These claims have focused, in particular, on the sphere of intimate domestic and sexual relationships. Although the fundamental rights chapter of the Constitution guarantees equality before the law, the pursuit of gender equality has frequently been sacrificed to religious-cultural claims defining and limiting women’s status. Yielding to such claims has served the interests of nation-building while at the same time guarding against any serious threat to the modernizing agendas of Pakistan’s political élite. Lost within such compromises is the recognition of women as bearers of rights, with equal rights to participate in the definition of religious-cultural norms. Lost also is a recognition of difference. Feminists, Islamic reformists and secularists have all been marginalized and excluded from a state that claims to guarantee equality to all. This article examines the strategies pursued by feminist movements within Pakistan and within the legal profession in attempting to resist the demands of conservative Islamist movements.

Retreat from multiculturalism: community cohesion, civic integration and the disciplinary politics of gender

The intersections of gender, religion and migration status have attracted only limited commentary to date. The significance of migration status as a marker of gender inequality, and one that further increases the burden of intersecting axes of discrimination, requires further scrutiny. This article examines the rise of civic integration requirements within the European Union and the significance of this rise for religious freedoms and complex ideals of gender equality. Particular attention is given to recent developments in the UK and France in the context of wider debates on immigration and integration policies. Against the background of diminishing sovereignty and the expansion of rights to non-citizens, states are rethinking the significance of citizenship and migration status and the criteria to be applied in determining membership and access to the nation-state. The adoption in France of the Charte des Droits et des Devoirs du Citoyen Francais marks a further step in the expansion of integration conditions imposed by states, and signals a continuing willingness to deploy juridical forms to enforce such conditions. Of particular concern to this Special Issue are the implications of civic integration requirements for migrant religious women and for feminist engagement with migration laws and the discourse of rights.

The UN, Minority Rights and Gender Equality: Setting Limits to Collective Claims

Defining the limits of minority rights poses a significant challenge to human rights norms. At the heart of current debates on multicultural citizenship is a concern to recognise the distinct cultural identifies of minority communities through legal mechanisms that allow for group-differentiated citizenship. Such differentiation, however, may bring with it the possibility of increasing segregation, the potential not for solidarity or cohesion but rather for fragmentation and conflict. This so-called ‘balkanisation’ effect can have particularly damaging consequences for women within minority communities, cut off from supports and networks within majority or minority communities. In recent years, the politicisation of multicultural politics and the increasing moral panic surrounding identity politics have fuelled public concerns that group-differentiated citizenship, given legal effect through protections of minority rights, threatens the bonds of community necessary for social cohesion. In turn, cultural symbols or signifiers of group difference, such as distinct dress codes or separate systems of religious based personal law, have become markers both of difference and resistance. This article explores the CEDAW Committees response to cultural claims, in the context of the reservations dialogue and argues that it provides a useful model through which to explore the possibility of more just multicultural arrangements in states.

Regulating Abortion: Dissensus and the Politics of Rights

This article forms the introduction to a special issue on comparative perspectives on the regulation of abortion and on the sociopolitical contexts within which proposals to expand access to abortion for women are won and lost. This introduction frames the collection of articles in the special issue and highlights key themes that reappear throughout the articles, such as the risks associated with the turn to law to secure the vindication of rights. Many of the articles contained in the special issue are concerned with the ‘after-rights’ moments associated with the implementation of abortion law in practice.

Speaking Across Borders: The Limits and Potential of Transnational Dialogue on Refugee Law in Ireland

Refugee Law in Ireland has developed rapidly over the last decade. This chapter highlights the extent to which lawyers, judges and policy-makers at the forefront of developing Irish law in this field have benefited from the greater availability of comparative and international law in recent years. As the cases explored in this chapter highlight, refugee law in Ireland is marked by significant transnational judicial dialogue. The adoption of the ECHR Act 2003 has further expanded the scope of this dialogue allowing for increasing reference to the practice of the Strasbourg Court and the UK Courts in matters of fundamental rights. However, it is also clear that the scope of this dialogue, and its potential to contribute to a European consensus on key concepts of refugee law, is limited. Constraining further harmonization of refugee law across EU member states is a common law / civil law divide that has limited the scope of transnational judicial dialogue in Ireland, and in other Member States. This is further compounded by a strict dualist approach to international law adopted by Irish courts. This chapter explores a series of rational and cultural factors that underpin the nature of judicial dialogue on refugee law in Ireland, drawing on selected cases from the superior courts and the published decisions of the Refugee Appeals Tribunal.

Substantive equality and positive duties in Ireland

Abstract The pursuit of substantive equality through legal strategies has met with significant obstacles in Ireland. Positive duties are one of a number of measures adopted in the pursuit of substantive equality, taking legal strategies beyond the limits of anti-discrimination laws. The reluctance to introduce positive duties to promote equality in Ireland is due largely to the absence of a substantive vision of equality and a growing antipathy towards socio-economic rights. This reluctance has particular implications for women. Over thelast decade, the emergence of the so-called ‘Celtic Tiger’ economy has brought with it significant tensions concerning the distribution of care responsibilities in the domestic sphere. These tensions highlight deeper conflicts within Ireland’s welfare regime and the limits of equality laws in tackling substantive inequality. This article traces these limits, highlighting the growing gap between equality protection in Ireland, North and South, and its detrimental impact on gender equality.